


Lost Causes

by Tanachvil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Training, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:44:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanachvil/pseuds/Tanachvil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The girl is a lost cause and he's out of patience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Causes

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in Italian and then translated, but it hasn't been betaed after translation nor britpicked. So, if you find any mistakes or something that sounds wrong, please let me know.

The frozen wind whips at the trees and hits the bridge at dragon speed, on his bare hands the skin of his knuckles feels stretched and on the verge of being ripped apart.   
  
The girl’s not cut out for it.   
The girl is a bloody Hufflepuff and he’s out of patience.   
  
Will they ever stop sending him these little delicate things, full of nothing but good will?  
Good will only gets you killed, that’s it. Gets you torn apart, one bit at the time, and Merlin knows they usually have not a lot of meat to spare. Stringy things, all long limbs and big eyes, all smiles and apologies. Useless, smiling, apologising cannon fodder.    
If a smile would have been a solution, with Bellatrix Lestrange, he’d still have both his legs. But he only has one and the wind is trying to punch him off his balance every other second.   
  
He drops the girl on the edge of the frozen bridge, nicely tied up and standing just beside the low wall, but she ends up with her arse on the ground before he can walk away.    
She didn’t last six seconds, Merlin’s balls!   
  
“Get up.”   
The wind howls so loudly that he isn’t sure she heard him.   
“I said get up. Now.”   
  
Her boots slip on the frost at first, then she manages to get some purchase and begins to pull herself up, sitting with her back against the stones.   
  
Can’t she see that he has to untie her hands if she wants to make it?  
Perhaps she  _can_ see that, because she starts to try, at least.    
She twists her wrists in the movement they taught her in training, but the knots are solid and unyielding. So she slides her hands under her bottom and brings her arms on the front.

Good girl, that’s the first good idea you’ve had. Now let’s see what you do next.   
  
“Can you hear the howling? This wind comes from the mountains and in five minutes your hands will be so frozen that you won’t be able to feel a thing.”    
She’s up now, carefully trying not to slip on the ice again.   
They told him she was clumsy, but not that she was a lost cause.    
She’s really good with Concealing and Disguising.  They said.   
Yeah, thanks a lot, she’s a Metamorphomagus.   
She’s just a bit clumsy, Madeye, she needs a little help.   
What she really needs is to face the truth and find a new job, not a little help.   
  
Did they really thought that he would have gone easy on the kid?   
He knows perfectly well they only send the hopeless ones to him. The ones they want to kick out of the program without doing it themselves.   
What a bunch of self-righteous cowards.   
Yeah, sure, it’s so much better to send the rookie to Madeye, make him piss himself, break a bone or two and then look as he quits Auror training as soon as he’s discharged from St. Mungo.   
But this is his last year, the last one indeed.   
He’s done giving away pieces of his life for the Ministry. A leg, one eye, half a nose, six teeth, a finger, half of his mind and lot of bad memories. Too many nightmares and ghosts when he closes his eye.    
And the girl, in front of him, is moving to the wrong side.   
“You have less than two minutes to find your wand, before I leave you here.”   
She whips her head up, like she could see him, behind the blindfold.   
What a fierce attitude, little lady!   
Growling at me is useless, I’m just the old school and you’re the next  worse  thing.   
  
She has her hands free, and about time too.   
She’s cold, he knows that, she’s freezing and her hands are going numb.   
She can’t see it, but her wand is there, less than five feet from her, wedged between the stones of the bridge. She’s so close, she could probably walk past it or perhaps on it, breaking it in half... That would be something.   
  
He draws near her, not bothering with stealth. He could be singing the bloody Hogwarts hymn and the wind would swallow every sound.    
When he sees her carefully shuffle her feet and stretch her arms towards her wand he grins.   
You are not completely hopeless, after all, uh? If nothing else, you are able to sense your wand. Good.   
Let’s raise the stakes a bit.   
  
He grips her at the arm and turns her over in an instant, using the ice to make her glide effortlessly in a twirl, until she’s trapped.   
The girl is breathing heavily, he can feel her shake from cold, fear, anger, from the magic of her wand calling at her and from the feeling of powerlessness that’s driving her crazy.    
She’s shaking, held with her arms behind her back, against the mad old Auror, hundreds of feet from the ground, in the middle of nowhere.   
  
He can almost hear what she’s thinking now, he knows.   
Is it over? Have I passed or failed? Is this Moody or someone else? Can I remove the blindfold? Can I go home now? Can I cry? Should I hit him? Should I let him prove a point?   
  
“You’re almost there, kid.”   
He talks in her ear, to overcome the howling of the wind, and he uses his warm voice, the one that’s hoarse but reassuring, his old warrior voice, the one that speaks of truce and promises that everything is going to be just fine.   
“You’re almost there, you only need to tell me one thing.”   
  
With her chin up, as in saying  what?, she turns her head around, towards him.   
“Do you trust me?” he asks, with his fatherly tone, warm and reassuring, close to her frozen ear.   
  
And she answers with a head butt.   
Hard and fast, on his nose.   
  
In a second, two stringy arms are pulling him up on a bony back, before he’s thrown forward and on the ground.   
The only thing he can do is follow the motion and roll over with a modicum of grace, before he crashes on the icy stone.   
  
When the magic eye comes back online, he sees a wand pointed at him and Nimphadora Tonks, in all the glory of her pink hair, is pinning him down with a foot on his chest.   
  
“No way, crazy old bastard.”   
  
Maybe the kid is not that bad, after all.   
He smiles, with his crooked grin, more holes than teeth, and lets her help him up.   
Yes, maybe she’s not that bad, not at all.    
He can make this work.    
“You’re starting tomorrow.”   
  
  
  



End file.
